An Unforgettable Message from an American Corporation-"Don't Be Afraid to Fail"

Corporate activity always occurs in the context of its relationship with society, and so companies need to communicate their messages to society-"What are we like, what is the nature of our business, and how do we want to relate to society?" I was still a young man when I realized this. At that time, United Technologies Corporation (UTC), a jet engine manufacturer on par with General Electric (GE) and other large companies, had begun in 1979 to take out full-page ads every month in the Wall Street Journal, designed to communicate their corporate image. These were published in Japanese in book form as "75 Messages that Moved America's Hearts" (Gakuseisha). When I saw this, I was surprised that even a company that manufactured jet engines was appealing to society, saying, "This is what our company is like."

One of these UTC full-page ads I found particularly relevant, the one that said, "Don't Be Afraid to Fail," which read, in part:

    "Don't Be Afraid to Fail
    You've failed many times, although you may not remember.
    You fell down the first time you tried to walk.
    You almost drowned the first time you tried to swim, didn't you?
    Did you hit the ball the first time you swung a bat?
    ...
    Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times, but he also hit 714 home runs.
    Don't worry about failure.
    Worry about the chances you miss when you don't even try."

This was the text of one of the ads taken out by UTC to communicate its corporate image.

Learning from this example, our company established its corporate concept as follows: "Ebara contributes to society through advanced technology and high-quality service in the fields of water, air and the environment." In order to put this concept into practice, we created the "ACT Action Plan," with A standing for Action, C for Creativity and T for Teamwork. This is a medium- to long-range plan that aims to promote our corporate concept in practical terms. We continue to revise this plan every three years in the course of our efforts towards realizing this corporate concept. Thinking about the theme of making a contribution to society and how the abilities that we have can be of use brings to mind the fact that Ebara Corporation is presently the largest-scale manufacturer of wind- and water-powered machinery in the world, and 20 years ago it was also the largest manufacturer of pumps. At present, we are still maintaining this position, although the environmental sector used to be an extremely small one. However, as we move into the twenty-first century, we aim to make a contribution to the environmental sector, and our operations have begun to shift towards the environment.

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The Zero Emission Concept-Internalizing Non-Economic Externalities

As I am sure you are all aware, our present environmental problems exist in a context of stress caused by extreme population growth. The world population is said to be 6.2 billion, and increasing by about 70 million people a year. Moreover, the gap between rich and poor, that is, the North-South gap, is gradually widening. The 20 percent of the world population that lives in developed nations possesses 84 percent of the world's wealth. We need to create a world where everyone can live decent lives in a context of the increasing population.

For this to happen, of course economic growth is necessary, but the natural resources that are the foundation for economic growth are in many cases nearing exhaustion. For example, 70 to 80 percent of the underground reserves of copper and gold used in semiconductor manufacturing have already been used. Fuels such as petroleum, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and uranium have been exhausted to the point where it is now said that they will last for only 50 or 70 more years-that is, they will be finished before the end of the twenty-first century.

When the necessary resources are exhausted, economic growth will naturally become impossible, so we need to ask how we can use resources so that they will not become exhausted. Resource conservation, recycling and other businesses are needed for "sustainable development" to occur. Now, when we process natural resources, or utilize them until they are ready to be discarded, we also create large amounts of harmful substances, and these harmful substances give rise to environmental problems. For example, in creating electricity we use a large amount of fossil fuel. This produces large amounts of carbon dioxide. And carbon dioxide produces a negative impact in the form of climate change, a global environmental problem.

We advocate the concept of "Total Life Cycle Cost" (TLCC). We are suggesting an approach in which burdens placed on the environment are calculated in monetary terms and introduced into the market economy, internalizing them economically. But until the internalization of environmental costs into the market economy is recognized by the society as a whole as the right thing to do, it seems to me that it will be nearly impossible to build a sustainable society. Thus, we need to incorporate into our social and economic systems the environmental regulations required to build up a recycling society, and/or incentives that promote this end. Also, as far as possible, we need to promote technological development that can enable this process. Finally, it is the consciousness of the public that will go farther than anything else to support these changes. That is, reforms in the lifestyles of consumers will be unavoidable.

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TLCC (Total Life Cycle Cost)-Converting Burden on the Global Environment to Monetary Value

Let me present an example of the way society as a whole can be evaluated by TLCC.

click to view large image

Let's take a look at industrial waste material, household sewage and wastewater, and other waste material produced by cities, as well as that produced on farms, which discharge household-type waste as well as large amounts of manure and other waste from livestock. In addition, forestry produces a great deal of waste from thinning of plantations and so on, while agriculture also produces waste material. This kind of waste material can be used, for example, as solid fuel. Or the pre-treated material can be gasified in a gas-conversion furnace, and that gas can be refined and used to power fuel cells to produce electricity, which can be distributed to homes, or used to power the facility itself. Or sewage waste can be converted to methane gas, and that methane can also be used to power fuel cells. Both of these processes also produce large amounts of heat, which can be used for heating and cooling spaces. Also, the material left over from methane gas extraction can be used as organic compost. The gas-conversion furnace can also be used to manufacture charcoal. Charcoal can, of course, be used to purify rivers. Nitrogen and phosphorus are presently the source of river pollution, and so, because this charcoal is the same as activated carbon, it will absorb these pollutants. Nitrogen and phosphorus are chemical fertilizers, and so they can in turn be returned to forests, rice paddies and other agricultural fields.

That is, we are developing equipment that can utilize waste materials completely. Now, I would like to present a simple TLCC evaluation of a system that incorporates this kind of equipment, compared to one that does not.

Givens-a population of 480,000, over a time span of 20 years, using TLCC calculations:

System 1 is the existing system that uses a stoker furnace. Sewage is treated with an aerobic sewage treatment system, with final waste disposed in landfills. System 2 uses a gas-conversion furnace to convert the waste to gas and then utilizes the gas. Rubbish is sorted and re-used as much as possible. Also, organic and other wastes are used as organic compost, as I mentioned earlier. These are the results of comparing these two systems. First, System 1 produces 21 tons of carbon dioxide, while System 2 produces 9 tons. Next, what will we use as factors in our evaluation? If we look at climate change, global warming is caused not only by carbon dioxide; rather, the effects of a total of 6 gases, including CFCs, methane, and others, are added to the global warming coefficient. This process is called impact assessment. With respect to factors contributing to acid rain, System 1 will cause very significant impacts. In the case of System 2, the figure is zero, and one can see the positive and negative aspects of these systems. Next, looking at the LCC (Life Cycle Costs), what about running costs? Because only limited equipment is needed for System 1, in terms of total costs it is very economical. As mentioned regarding economic production of pumps, equipment for this system is very cheap. However, because various facilities and equipment are needed for System 2, it is rather expensive. System 1 costs 87 billion yen while System 2 costs 94 billion. But, if we look at TLCC (Total Life Cycle Costs), which takes into consideration the burden on the environment, System 1 incurs a cost of 298 billion yen, while System 2 incurs a cost of 283 billion. That is, if the burdens placed on the global environment are calculated in monetary terms, the new system comes out ahead. Thus, we can see that the new system will be effective for building a recycling society.

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Development of Equipment for Extracting Hydrogen and Methanol from Biomass and Plastic Waste

As one example of technology development, I would like to talk about progress in biomass systems. The gasification furnaces we presently use (which produce electricity from domestic waste, shredder dust, industrial waste, etc.) produce electricity by taking the gas emitted, introducing air, and burning it in order to fire boilers. However, with present technology, hydrogen is produced from the waste, and this chemically bonds with nitrogen in the air to produce ammonia (chemical recycling: Ebara Ube Process). Ube Industries in Yamaguchi Prefecture produces 65 tons a day of ammoniato fire its commercial furnaces. Another method involves the large amounts of salts that are contained in waste. These salts cause technical problems. For example they form into hydrochloric acid, which greatly increases the rate of corrosion of the machinery, and because chlorine is present, electricity cannot be generated efficiently. Methods for raising the efficiency of electricity generation even in the presence of chlorine are now being developed. This is called TIFG (Twin Internally Circulating Fluidized Bed Gasifier). Such methods are now being developed for high-efficiency electricity generation.

In talking about another method, please remember that most biomass, such as cow manure or even wood, is more than half water. Naturally, if you have water, calories must be expended to evaporate the water, so when you burn this kind of material, the volume of energy that is actually released is going to be very small. So some kind of method is needed that will garner a lot of energy from materials high in water content. This development involves the next generation of gasification furnaces, and gasification furnaces that utilize mostly biomass are now being developed.

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Biomass Can Provide 6 to 7 Times the Energy Now Being Used By Humanity

The twentieth century was a time when a large number of products were created using mostly petroleum and coal. However, when we use biomass, we enter a closed-loop system. That is, when we collect biomass and manufacture from it the same kind of products, the carbon dioxide emitted becomes fixed in the biomass. When we make new products using the biomass in which this carbon dioxide is fixed, we can construct a system with zero waste, if you consider only the carbon dioxide aspect. I think that the future of industry in the twenty-first century will be based on how efficiently we will be able to utilize biomass.

According to trials happening in Japan, biomass industries will have to be set up with geographical ranges of about 40 to 50 square kilometers. That is, if the biomass is going to be transported in from 200 km away, the amount of energy needed to transport the biomass is going to be larger than the energy that can be produced. However, even so, in Japan there is a huge amount of biomass available, estimated at 190 million tons. The largest component is livestock manure, at 90 million tons. Municipal rubbish is said to amount to about 50 million tons, and we are already operating many facilities using municipal rubbish exclusively, but there is almost double that amount available as manure. Also, people do not eat as much rice as they used to, and a lot of paddy land remains fallow. Fallow land is said to account for 10 percent of the total available rice paddy land, amounting to 250,000 hectares. In addition, about 30 percent of non-paddy agricultural land also lies fallow. If these fallow lands were used, it's said that they could produce 10 million tons of biomass crops. This is how the figure of 190 million tons was reached. If all of this biomass were converted to hydrogen, it would be enough to fuel all the automobiles in Japan, if they all ran on hydrogen fuel cells.

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Figure shows a Biomass Industrial Complex.

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It illustrates how a gasification furnace such as I mentioned earlier can be set up as the central element of a regional production facility. You can see the municipal waste, sewage waste, industrial waste or other such materials. You can also see agricultural waste coming in from farming districts-for example, straw from the production of rice or animal manure from beef production, which will, of course, amount to twice as much as the municipal rubbish. If the forests are not taken care of they will die, producing more carbon dioxide, so forest management is needed. This too produces a lot of waste material. Even when trees are processed into lumber, a lot of waste material is produced. This kind of material from agriculture, forestry, and other wastes such as fish entrails, are disposed of together with the municipal waste. That is to say, it does not matter what the source is, but what type of waste material it is. This material is sorted in accordance to its quality.

This material is put through a refinery process and hydrogen gas is extracted. Electricity and heat are then extracted by using this gas in micro gas turbines, fuel cells or boilers like those being used presently.

Electricity generating power plants produce electricity but the heat they produce is wasted. That is, electric power plants are not located in areas where the heat they generate can be used, but fortunately, if we find it necessary to set up biomass plants that serve a 50 kilometer-square area, this confers the advantage of also being able to utilize that heat. Thus, we can advertise that we are growing specialty agricultural products in greenhouses using recovered heat and electricity. By growing extra-sweet tomatoes, peaches in winter, cherries year-round, or other special agricultural products, we can have a very significant impact on economic growth locally.

Also, as we all know, wood comes in the form of trees, and that is because lignin bonds the wood fibers together. Lignin is a kind of glue, and if lignin and fibers are separated and put back together in a certain way, something very similar to plastic can be created. Or biodegradable plastic can be produced from fibers (saccharides). This means making plastics out of plant material-instead of the petroleum they are presently made from. This kind of plastic decomposes when it is buried in the ground. A great many of the industrial products we now produce can also be made of this kind of plastic, so things now made out of petroleum and coal can be made from this new material.

The problem with this kind of biomass refinery is that it is difficult to make it profitable. That is, collecting the raw materials costs a lot of money. Thus, it becomes an expensive operation. So, we have to devise a way to deal with these high costs. However, if the TLCC evaluation I mentioned before is applied, the cost of reparations for the burdens placed on the environment must, after all, be borne by everyone. These costs must be factored into the market economy. When something has been used and thrown away, there arises the problem of who should bear the cost of dealing with it, for example, that this cost should be borne by the person who used the item. The way these costs are distributed can cause them to be factored into the market economy.

At present, the efficiency of fuel cell batteries has risen to 42 percent. Because the efficiency of thermal electric power generation normally falls short of 40 percent, this means that exceedingly efficient rates of electric power generation are being achieved with fuel cells. Moreover, because electricity is generated by the combination of hydrogen and oxygen, the resulting product is water. Fortunately, this water is hot, ranging from about 70 to 90 degrees Celsius. After the electricity is produced, hot water remains. Thus, we no longer need gas to heat water for use in the kitchen or bath. Thus, with a single fuel source we can achieve an overall efficiency rate of up to 80 percent. That is to say, the electricity generation is at best 40 percent, but the same fuel provides double that value in practice, so it's thought that fuel cell use will become widespread for households.

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Act Now on Global Environmental Issues-Tomorrow Will Be Too Late

Ryukyu University is now conducting studies of water conservation-type agriculture. The twenty-first century is being called the "century of water." Japan receives about 1,700 mm of rain a year, but the level for China is about 600 mm. A level of 600 mm is only enough rain to be evaporated from the leaves of trees and from the ground, leaving almost nothing for use in many extensive areas of China. Looking at the global picture, including the issue of how much rainfall can be collected, it is clear that the effects of global warming are now causing extreme changes in climate, and this is causing a variety of problems. For example, in some cases dams that have been constructed cannot be used anymore. Thus, it is being said that water will be treated in future as a very precious resource.

Sea water is, of course, water, but it is by means of natural energy (sunlight, the sun's heat) that fresh water is created in nature. In water conservation-type agriculture, because this water is so difficult to come by, only the precise amount required by the plants is provided through drip irrigation. The plants themselves are also very clever-if there is no water, genes that allow the plant to withstand the lack of water become active. Most genes in general do not function, and so various factors are activated in order to deal with various environments. This is how the organism deals with its environment. The skin of tomatoes becomes very tough in order to prevent water from evaporating, and in turn this causes the tomatoes to have a very high sugar content, making for a sweet tomato. If salad greens are grown where water is scarce, they develop in ways that tend to prevent water from evaporating from their leaves, and where ordinary salad greens will wither within a week of harvest, those raised by drip irrigation still stay very fresh even after two weeks. These are the kinds of results they are getting.

Until now, the standard for judgment for every kind of product we see around us has been an equation measuring utility against price. That is, the standard has been the cost of production. This is not enough. The factor of environmental cost has to be added in. This, rather than any other, is our new indicator. Since the Industrial Revolution, people have been developing products based on old-fashioned models. However, if we now need to develop new technology based on new concepts and new evaluation criteria, we can deny everything our forerunners did. As technical experts, we are living in an age when we can do worthwhile work of great significance. I think we can be happy that, as technical experts, we happen to have been born into a very wonderful age. My sincere hope is that, together, we can build a recycling society that we can be proud of. I think Japan has great potential in this field. A great deal has been said about how society was recycling every single item used in every aspect of day-to-day life during the Edo Period in Japan [1603-1867]. In the environmental sense, we had a sustainable society then, and if we take a spiritual perspective-that this experience is still included in our genetic makeup-I think that this innate potential will be very useful as we move towards a recycling society today. I would like to finish, then, with my hopes that Japan will be able to make a contribution to the world in this field. Thank you.

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